Monday, April 4, 2011

Do you have a One True Love?

There's Good Days and then there's the other Days

There are days when I know for a fact that Romance authors have the BEST job in the universe. For example, I am dipping my toes into the world of self-publishing my reverted backlist titles. {Ahem! WTF?} Oh. That means, titles that I published a long time ago and that are out of print and for which I have requested that the rights I licensed to my publisher be returned to me. And those rights were returned to me.
{Brief Aside:} After getting just one title out there for 6 weeks, let's say that the experiment is a success on a life-changing level. Life||Changing.

So, the other day, I was looking for cover art for a short story I wrote. The hero of that story is of Eurasian descent (also demon, but that's unrelated to my present tale). I quickly discovered that on the Royalty Free image sites, searching for "Asian Man" made me sad. Can you say Stereotype? O.M.G. I started getting kind of angry, to be honest. When I finally found an image of a very handsome hunky Asian man, the image was so far out of my price range I was weeping for a different reason.

That took me to Flickr where I searched for Hot Asian Men. That, as you might well imagine, lead to some frightening results, but also results that were exactly what I was looking for, only All Rights Reserved.

{Brief Aside}: The issue is not resolved, but that's also not the point of this post.

Carolyn's Other One True LoveTM

It was on Flickr that I came across the man who is now My Other One True Love*, Upen Patel. This link is probably SFW, except it's many many images of a gorgeous man, so if you're at work, use your discretion about whether to click on Images of Upen Patel

* For the curious, my One True Love is Alexander Skarsgard.

Here's the picture of Upen Patel that would be PERFECT for my cover:

If only I could use it.

My search continues.

I also discovered Vivek Oberoi. Google that name on your own.

Those two men are why I have the best job ever because I HAD to go Googling for the sort of thing that brought me into their digital paths.

{Brief Aside}: Bollywood, please come to the US!

I don't know what I'm going to do about a cover because it just wouldn't be right to put a White Dude on the cover. Suggestions anyone? Keeping in mind that I am Not A Graphics Person. Any attempt on my part to DIY a cover would be embarrassing for everyone concerned.

Congrats, that's awesome. I am actually working on self-pubbing a book with a hero of Indian/middle eastern descent, but alas, it is not romance so no hunky guy on the cover for me. good luck in your search.

ps, you should have shared a couple images from your 'hot asian guy' search. i can only imagine, lol.